Document processing facilities are a vital part of any major enterprise for ensuring effective mail based communication between the enterprise and its external and internal constituencies. Typically, document processing facilities employ a multitude of operational processes, people and/or machine resources and systems for processing the often massive quantities of letters, packages, envelopes, coupon booklets, brochures, post cards, and other items of mail intended for external distribution via a mail distribution network (e.g., the United States Postal Service (USPS)) or internal distribution within the enterprise. The types of processes performed respective to a mail article will vary depending on the mail article type, the function of the mail article and the capabilities and requirements of the machine resource or system engaged in that article's processing.
Types of machine resources found within a typical document processing facility may vary from one facility to the next, but may generally include sorters for sorting mail articles according to a sort scheme into one or more mail bins, inserters for manufacturing mail articles and preparing them for distribution, cutters, printers and folders for generating, assembling, arranging and organizing mail articles, mail bins for accumulating the multitude of mail articles processed in preparation for distribution, postage meters for applying postage to mail articles according to their particular weight class/mail category, etc. In addition, a multitude of computing resources may be interconnected with the various machines within the facility to ensure proper operation and connectivity of the devices (e.g., connectivity to an application server capable of executing software associated with the device) as well as to track articles during processing. Furthermore, each of these devices or computing resources may be supported and/or used by one or more device operators/users who execute tasks in connection with one or more customers, projects or procedures. Suffice to say, a plurality of machine resources, people, and processes must be effectively coordinated to ensure optimal operation of the document processing environment in the production of mail articles.
A key requirement to ensure such coordination within a production environment is through effective workflow management. Workflow management generally entails the strategic coordination, engagement and monitoring of one or more machine resources and one or more processes for the fulfillment of a particular job. In the case of a document processing environment, an exemplary job may be the production of a plurality of mail articles from various types of items—envelopes, various inserts, customized documents—intended for distribution in the mail articles to various mail recipients. Production of a mail article may involve differing machine resources and processes as performed by an inserter system to render the finished mail article including but not limited to: printing of data onto the envelope or inserts, lamination or embossing of data onto the envelope or inserts, application of glue at target locations of the envelope or insert, cutting or folding of inserts, assembling of inserts relative to a specific mail recipient, insertion of inserts, sealing of envelopes.
In such a production environment, where multiple individual items combine to formulate a distinct mail article, it would be beneficial to track and account for each item as it morphs into the intended final product (mail article) during the production process. It would also be desirable to use the item tracking/accounting information to provide more detail regarding the workflow process as it pertains to each item involved to ensure workflow integrity. Hence a need exists for technology to provide progressive tracking of items in relation to an automated workflow producing finished articles, for example, for tracking of individual items intended for mailing through the workflow production of finished mail articles.